The Birth of Tragedy |
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived … I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..." (Walden, 1854). |
Cezanne’s sensibility was so tensely alert that there is no hint of the dryness which might have resulted from so geometrical a construction. The concordance which we find in Cezanne between an intellect rigorous, abstract and exacting to a degree, and a sensibility of extreme delicacy and quickness of response is seen here in masterly action. Such a concordance must be something of a miracle. No wonder that so nice a balance of special gifts, each of them comparatively rare, occurs only at long intervals in the history of art.
Here at all events Cezanne might, one thinks, for once have felt that he had “realized”, so overwhelming is the impression of living reality. Vasari would certainly have expressed it by saying that this was life itself, and no mere imitation, which may be only another way of expressing Cezanne’s idea that the artist is the means by which nature becomes self-conscious.
"Cezanne: a Study of His Development
by Fry, Roger
